BEN AFFLECK decided to put back the UK release of his directorial debut because of its startling parallels with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Here, the father of two-year-old Violet Anne talks to John Millar about the demands of filming a story about child abduction.

Ben Affleck is proof that Hollywood has a heart. The Oscar-winning star showed that he cared deeply about the emotions of others when he put sensitivity over the Madeleine McCann case ahead of his debut as a film director.

The 35-year-old star fully supported the Walt Disney studio bosses when they decided to cancel the premiere of his film, Gone Baby Gone, at last September’s London Film Festival and delay its British cinema release for eight months.

Eerie coincidences had caused Gone Baby Gone, a film based on the Denis Lehane novel, which Affleck read six years ago, to be caught up in the heart-rending case of Madeleine.

Gone Baby Gone eerily echoes the story of missing Madeleine McCann

In the film, Ben’s younger brother Casey stars as a detective who is hired to find a four-year-old girl after she has gone missing in a grim area of Boston. Ironically, the child at the centre of the film was portrayed by Madeline O’Brien, who has a resemblance to Madeleine McCann.

These factors and their awareness of the depth of sensitivity that surrounded the case, caused Affleck and Disney to postpone the UK screening of this Oscar-nominated film.

“We have a greater concern for this young girl’s situation than we have for the release of our film,” says Affleck.

Ben put sensitivity over the Madeleine McCann case ahead of his debut as a film director.

“This is just a commercial concern but that is a matter of life and death, folks and family and quite tragic. No one is taking it lightly.”

The Madeleine case did not receive the sort of coverage in the US that happened in Europe and Affleck admits that, initially, he didn’t have much awareness of it.

“I had only a surface familiarity with it. The reason we wanted to be sensitive was that we didn’t want to release the movie if it was going to inflame anybody’s sensibilities.”

Affleck and his actress wife Jennifer Garner, whom he met on the movie Daredevil, have a daughter, Violet Anne, who is three in December.

Being a parent made him even more aware of the nightmarish elements of the plot explored in Gone Baby Gone, in which a paedophile nest is uncovered.

“These issues went from being what is the worst thing that you could think of as an exercise, to this really emotional feeling of the most painful, horrible thing that I could imagine,” he says.

“This is a big transition for me in my life because I feel things more deeply... anything to do with kids.

It makes me realise just how much more vulnerable a child is. Having a child is like taking the most vulnerable aspect of myself, reaching in and taking it outside of my body, and it is about to fall off the chair.”

Ben directed an all star cast including his brother Casey and Ed Harris

Affleck, who co-wrote the script, was so wrapped up in the making of this dense and disturbing drama that he was completely drained at the end of each day’s work.

“When I came home I would sleep like a brick,” he says.

It was also impossible for him to be unaffected by the material with which he was working. Affleck admits that one particular sequence in Gone Baby Gone was profoundly disturbing for everyone involved.

“There was one scene where a child dies and that remained upsetting for a lot of the crew. If that is not going to upset you then you are pretty cold,” he says.

One of the reasons that he wanted to make Gone Baby Gone was that it was set in his home town of Boston, so he returned to spots where, 10 years earlier, he had filmed Good Will Hunting, which won him a Screenplay Oscar.

Working in the seediest parts of the city had risks, as Affleck concedes. “There was only one bar that we went into when we were location scouting that was genuinely menacing. There were a couple of places where people were drunk and hostile, some were depressing and a couple were scary,” he says.

“You go into a place and people are really poor and alcoholics and drug addicts. They are miserable and have ruined their lives and don’t want to see people who are happy because they are so burning with misery and resentment.

“We went into a few neighbourhoods where there was a lot of drug dealing and a couple of times the cops almost arrested us because they thought we were trying to buy drugs. The other time the police swooped in on us because there was a human trafficking ring in a house. It was wild! We really came across some bad stuff. People can be pretty ugly to each other.”

Affleck also reveals that having his 32-year-old brother Casey as his leading actor meant there were times when they clashed – loudly.

“I wish there had been ESP because it would have saved us four fights a day,” he says. “Because we are brothers we openly disagree. There would be times when people would be sitting around the set waiting for us to work out our disagreements. It helped in the long run because we could arrive at the same page.”

Although he is hugely experienced as a film actor, with big films such as Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Hollywoodland behind him, Affleck admits he was nervous about becoming a director and says the first day on set was an especially scary experience.

“I was terrified because I wanted it to work so much. The stakes were kind of higher for me because I really, really cared. If it didn’t work I was willing to admit that I would be crushed!” he says.

“So I just had the most pressure that I have ever felt and I worked as hard as I could on every single thing. If this failed it would not be because I didn’t work as hard as I possibly could... every day.”

Gone Baby Gone is released on June 6.

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